I make my living as a portrait painter. I live in Wales. I am still arranging this website, so it is a little incoherent, incomplete & untidy.

Portrait Painter

Raised in Cheshire, I painted & drew all the time. My education was unsuccessful & was followed by various short-term manual jobs, occasionally selling a drawing. By 1977 I was in London where an old school friend, Malcolm Garett got me back on the rails, introducing me to design for print. I worked with him at assorted iMaGes, producing artwork for record sleeves & posters. I set up DKB in 1984, & joined by Peter Curzon & Martin Jenkins, designed for; Scritti Politti, ABC, FYC, the Mission, Alison Moyet, Bryan Ferry and others. I started to do paintings, illustrations & collages that we then used on sleeves. I worked also with Storm Thorgerson, renowned for his work under the name Hipgnosis. He encouraged my interest in making sculptures which we employed on sleeves for Pink Floyd & others. For the first time I considered the possibility that I could become an artist - painting for a living.

The recession of the late 80's coincided with my increasing disinterest in the music business, dominated it seemed, by fashions, fads & egos. In 1988 we bought a cottage in Mid-Wales with a view to leaving London. In 1992 I closed the business & we moved to Wales.

I spent 2 years (& all our savings) renovating the cottage, and then I came to paint. It was more difficult than I had expected. I worked in an old static caravan in the garden. For 6 months I tried to "be a painter", rejecting idea after idea as being too pretentious, or unoriginal. By late 1994 we had no money, I was without any real direction & the caravan, a dismal place, was leaking badly.

A friend kindly offered me a room to use as a studio in a village nearby &, with a decent space & light, things picked up. In an interview with the printmaker Terry Frost, I read; "looking for something to inspire you to work is an escape from taking action. The decision to take action is the only way of seeing". This simplified it for me - forget the thinking - start work! I would paint the things around me, the things figurative painters had always painted; still lives, landscapes, & portraits.

I tried a still life & it went well, though I had little understanding of technique or materials. I painted two self-portraits & a friend asked me to do portraits of his children. I entered an oil portrait of our friend & neighbour, Jack Richards, in the annual open exhibition at MOMA Cymru, where it won first prize. Then I spent 6 months painting & repainting "Jack a Morley Richards Ty Nant", a portrait of Jack & his brother Morley standing in the landscape. Encouraged by friends & family, I entered it for the BP Portrait Awards (NPG, London). It was voted "favourite painting" by visitors. I received letters from people who had been moved by my painting & this was a great encouragement & a kind of validation. Maj. Geoffrey Crook, for the Royal Pioneer Corps Association, seeing the painting, offered me a commission to paint a portrait of Maj. Gen. Field, then Governor of the Tower of London.

Since then portrait commissions have built slowly & I have worked steadily, learning always, establishing myself as a portrait painter. In 2000 I was elected to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. In 2002 I built a studio in the grounds of our home.

We live in a small, rural, Welsh-speaking community in an area of quiet, natural beauty. Our children have been, & continue to be educated here through the medium of Welsh. We have been made to feel very welcome here & in an environment that respects craft, honesty & hard work, I have found the space & encouragement to become myself & fulfil my ambition of painting for a living.

Graphics

I spent 15 years working as a graphic designer, mostly in the music industry - sleeves, posters, advertising, t-shirts etc. Some of the sleeves are in the galleries here - just go to "other work" then "graphics".

Portrait Painter

I have come to be a "portrait painter" unintentionally, but in many ways it suits me perfectly. I do not function well in large groups, but enjoy the company of individuals greatly. A portrait is very much the result of a collaboration between sitter & artist, the portrait artist records his experience of the sitter. Some of the portraits are in the gallery here - click "paintings" on the homepage, then "commissioned work".

Art

I have many views on art & when I find the time, I will put some of them down here....